W3C Incubator Group on the Relationships Between Relational Databases and RDF

W3C has just launched a new Incubator Group to study Mapping Relational Data into RDF. To quote from the group’s charter:

[...] examine and classify existing approaches to mapping relational data into RDF and decide whether standardization is possible and/or necessary in this area and, if so, the direction such standardization could take. The goal is to specify how to generate RDF triples from one or more Relational tables without loss of information. Furher, a default mapping should not be used, but, instead, it should be possible for the the mapping to be customized by the user.

[...] examine and classify existing approaches to mapping OWL classes to Relational data, or, more accurately, SQL queries, moving towards the goal of defining a standard in this area.

You can also consult the home page of the group for further details and to monitor progress.